Monday, September 27, 2010

The Event

I watched the first episode of this new NBC show over the weekend, and I thought it was pretty entertaining. I mean, it had to be entertaining, since it seems to be a show based purely on "WTF?!" moments with no real answers anywhere in sight. Every scene built up to some mystery that ended on a cliffhanger at a commercial break, until the final moment of the episode that ended on a real cliffhanger. I have no idea what this show is going to be about, received no real investment in any of the characters, or have any faith that answers will be all that forthcoming any time soon, but, again, I liked it. It was exciting and clever and a lot of fun to watch.

I really don't have much to say about this show, if only because nothing happened yet. A girl got kidnapped (maybe), a plane got hijacked, and there was an attempt to crash it into the president's press conference. And that was the entire episode, but it was all told with shifting time lines and changing points of view, so the same ten minutes or so of storytime was extended across an entire episode. After every scene, some other scene would begin with the title "Ten months earlier," "Five minutes earlier," or "13 months, two days, and six minutes before last Tuesday." Considering all the shifts in times and locales, they did a really good job of keeping the story simple and easy to follow. The cast seems to be pretty good, with especially memorable performances by that little latino guy (or maybe he just has black hair, I dunno) and Blaire Underwood as the president. Just as an aside, now that we actually have an African American president, can't we go back to having a white man as president again in our movies and TV shows? I'm not complaining here, but when was the last time you saw a president that wasn't either a black man or a white woman? I guess the next step would be a black woman president.

Anyway, the Event was neat, but it did seem a little by the numbers, as though it was based around the concept of keeping people in suspense at that's it. Which is fine, because people love suspense, but let's hope the story and the characters prove to be worth it.

1 comment:

Justin Garrett Blum said...

I caught the last ten minutes--just the bit where the guy is trying to get into his hotel room and nobody knows who he is. We've all seen variations of this plot play out before, but it was still suspenseful. After that I kind of zoned out, since I wasn't really watching the show.

I'm so reluctant to get engaged in shows like this, because it's just difficult for me to believe they're actually going to go somewhere. But maybe I'll check in from time to time if it lasts.